


Reversed

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s07e13 Redrum, Episode: s07e15 Law of Gravity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Nick reflects on his betrayal and Grissom comes back to a fractured team, a look at both Redrum and Law of Gravity.
Relationships: Gil Grissom & Nick Stokes
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	Reversed

_ “Nick.”  _

He could not move any faster as the anchors of his feet drag across the tile of an empty hallway. He’s leaving one home for another, no adventures in between. He’s tired. 

Of so many things.

_ “Nick!” _

He stops. He turns. He listens.

He owes Warrick at least that much for jumping off a cliff with him.

_ “Let it go, man.” _

It’s an ironic twist on words he’s spoken before. He knows this. 

_ Don’t take it with you. _

He cocks his head, ready for another war but instead steps out into the chilling night air that creeps its way through the open flaps of his quilted jacket. He zips up just as a shiver slides down his spine. He releases the breath he only just realized he was holding, spewing and rolling back at him like a wave slapping an already frigid face with ice.

It’s never been colder.

_ He’s  _ never been colder. 

_ We trust you with our lives, Catherine. You could have trusted us with this. _

More of his own words, his own tongue feels bitter even though he’s right to be so betrayed. But then, maybe he’s being too harsh, he thinks. This wasn’t a life and death situation, it’s not like their lives were at stake. 

He spends his drive home in silence, the only sounds coming from the flashy ambience of the lively city that he turned down an invitation to indulge in with his best friend, and his own shallow, staggered breathing as sweat starts to bubble out of his pores.

When he pulls into his driveway, he forgoes checking his mail, strutting straight past the busted threshold, his fingers tracing the remnants of his fury when one of their lives  _ were  _ at stake—Greg’s bruises had only just faded a few weeks ago—and he hunches himself over the garbage bin just in time for a sickening realization that sure, they weren’t sitting on a bomb or being attacked by a mob...but there are some things you trust someone with that are worth more than your life.

_ There are some people you’re supposed to be able to trust, you know? _

Supposed to. 

_ Supposed  _ to. 

Catherine’s been a close friend for years. A friendly co-worker. A motherly mentor. And when she noticed something was wrong and threatened to remove him from one of the most important cases in his life, he showed her the part of himself he’s never shown  _ anybody,  _ not even his own  _ mother,  _ before, and told her about how his trust had been violated before, how  _ he  _ had been violated before.

How it made him the person he is today.

And who is that person, he has to wonder as he splashes his face with cold water and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The type of person to throw a fit just because his supervisor was “out to get him” over the last couple days? No, he’s always respected Grissom’s decisions, and he’s always respected Catherine’s. They were put in their power for a reason. 

Is he the type to wonder if this is some sort of karma for how he abandoned Catherine in the club that night, no matter how many times she told him it wasn’t his fault? 

Is that why she didn’t trust  _ him?  _

He could have done better back then. And could have done better now. Warrick once told him maybe he’s in the wrong town and he’s right. Maybe he is.

Is he the type of person to stage a mutiny instead of keeping his head down, keeping his mouth shut? 

Yes, because he’s the person who won’t back down in the face of injustice. 

But this wasn’t injustice, per se. At least, not the sum of the whole situation. 

It was borderline  _ corruption.  _

He knew there were times Catherine had let the power get to her head a little. Relishing sticking her guys on the menial tasks that she had to do for  _ years,  _ now it was their turn. He knew she wasn’t necessarily happy getting demoted, so this pseudo-promotion, as temporary as it may be, gave her that high, and he can’t blame her for that, really.

And this guy, this Jersey asshole who thinks he can win by playing a sick and twisted game of cat and mouse, perverting the righteous hounds of justice into snakes twisting around the arms that balance the scale, tipping it in their favor as it pleases, no matter the lives that are altered or destroyed. The hard work done by honorable people thrown out the window. Playing with fire,  _ murderous  _ fire, in a rigged game that goes against everything they know.

There are plenty of games in Vegas. 

Working in the crime lab was not one of them.

He pulls out a six pack from his refrigerator, plants himself on the couch. Pops open the bottle cap with his thumb and doesn’t care that a crimson trickle follows. The sting is lesser than the pull on the strings in his heart.

He throws on some documentary on the discovery channel. Turns the volume louder than his thoughts, but the voices turn from whispers to screams. 

He continues to drink the bitter, carbonated, mind altering liquid that does succeed in settling his nerves, but riles up the churn in his stomach.

He tries to forget.

Tries to sleep it off, but sleep is a luxury he can’t have, or else he’ll fall into a traversal of a dreamscape that he’ll always be sentenced to.

He tries to  _ forgive.  _

His dreams teach him a lesson of how much more could happen, how Catherine could go around handing out another Crime Stopper flier that doesn’t talk about how he makes toys, but talks about his tarnished childhood. Watches how Catherine remains silent about the bomb under the box, and how she smiles through the battlefield of dirt and fire as he tries to claw his way out of the mouth of the earth that swallows him whole. 

Watches how  _ he  _ gets framed,  _ again,  _ and this time, she walks away.

Just as he did when he left the club that night.

Nick gasps and rises from his uneasy slumber, the leather back of his armchair glued the skin that peels away in a slow, agonizing fashion while he shakes off the cold beads of sweat on his face. There’s a clink of bottles at his feet, while he fumbles for his pager that has become his alarm clock. 

While he buries the pitiful lethargic hangover under a refreshingly cold shower, a prepped protein shake and a new set of clothes, he’s able to view the day for what it is; a new one. 

And just as the day had reset itself, he reconciles that he’ll put this all behind him, start fresh and continue to give Keppler and Catherine the same respect and professional courtesy that he gives everybody else, friend or not.

All he has to do is outlast them.

And he has the best endurance out of anybody in that building. 

He knows Keppler won’t be around forever, anyway, transferred back to days and he’ll just become another face he sees in the hallway. He knows Catherine won’t be giving him orders much longer, because Grissom will be back soon and things can maybe return to normal.

Right?

* * *

“There are no words to describe how glad I am you're back.”

Grissom was hoping he’d run into literally anybody else on his way back in.

Yet he can’t deny that he’s missed yanking some chains, especially Hodges’.

“But I’m sure you’ll find some,” he smirks, and as usual, his insult is lost on the attention seeking man.

“The lab almost went to hell in a handbag while you were sabbaticalling.”

He also can’t deny that it’s good to be missed.

“I'm sure you talked to Catherine, but just in case you didn't…”

And he didn’t, not yet. She was the second person on his list of people he wanted to talk to.

Sara, of course, was the first.

“Lot of hurt feelings, so in case you talk to Nick…”

He almost misses the name drop, holds his hand up to put a pause on the rambling man.

“I’d rather hear it from Catherine, thanks,” Grissom dismisses him, knowing that any version of events Hodges tells him would be filled with inconsistency and exaggeration.

Still, it’s enough to sober his giddy return and for him to start stroking his chin with slight concern, knowing Nick’s knack for getting his feelings hurt. His naive sensitivity has always been one of his weaknesses, and though he’s toughened in the past few years, there was always still that part of him that was just so easily hurt. The part that he always tried to keep hidden but would easily be found in watering eyes, in bruised knuckles, in growls and shouts of anger, in solemn solitary silence in his self imposed “time outs” in the locker room. 

And his concern grows stronger when he decides to first hear about the cause of this friction from Warrick, who he sees before Catherine during an escape from the already overwhelming workload that he was happy to have an excuse not to look at.

“Have you ever heard of ‘reverse forensics?’” 

He had been nonchalantly examining a pile of paperwork that was still better than the mountain on his desk, but any direction outside of ‘forward’ when put next to the word ‘forensics’ set something off within him, and in a way, Warrick didn’t even need to elaborate on what had transpired, how Keppler goaded Catherine and Brass and even the Undersheiff in staging a crime scene but keeping everybody else in the dark. How the intention was to let the killer think he was off the hook so that he’d come out of hiding—which doesn’t sit right with Grissom who realizes that would just allow for more deaths, more crimes and that’s the anthesis, the  _ reverse  _ direction of what they do. 

How Nick did a staging of himself in the form of a coup, leading what Warrick considered to be the true team in the same tip-toeing dance around Catherine and Keppler’s tango to uncover the truth, to  _ do their job.  _

“He’s, uh, well, you know Nick, puts on a smile and pretends he’s fine when he’s not,” Warrick sighs. “I told him to let it go, but...I don’t think he did.”

And why would he, Grissom thinks, and transmits to Warrick through his eyes and a sad sigh. 

“Anyway. Glad you’re back at the helm. Cath’s a great supervisor and all, but...you never kept us in the dark like that. Felt like less of a team and more of...just...another job, I guess.”

“‘The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.’”

“Babe Ruth?”

Grissom smirks and puckers his lips before returning his focus to the investigation at hand.

“Didn’t peg you for a baseball fan,” Warrick chuckles.

And he doesn’t peg himself one to express personal displays of affection, but there’s a first for everything.

He had gone in for the very least, a hug with his secret girlfriend, was so happy to see her that he even dared to risk a kiss, but she rejected his advances and he was left in his rare lust for a personal connection until he found a slightly argumentative Nick and Catherine bustling through the hallway. 

“Maybe he’s being set up,” Catherine suggests, the desperate hope straining her voice.

“Set up by who?” it’s the same question Grissom will echo when they have their full debrief in the office as a team. “Catherine, look, there’s somethin’ fishy going on here, we can’t just assume he’s clean and hell, he got rough with a suspect earlier, slammed his head into the table.” 

“And you haven’t gotten rough with a suspect before?”

“This is just cause you got the hots for him, isn’t it?” Nick accuses in a sneer. “He’s got you hook, line and sinker, no wonder he let you walk all over this team—”

“I didn’t walk over anything, I led this team—”

_ “Blindly,” _ Nick interrupts, crossing his arms but he doesn’t remain still for long, starting to turn away as Catherine continues to talk.

“—Through a dark tunnel with no headlights. But you should be able to trust that I wouldn’t lead anybody to failure, or harm, or just leave you guys in the dark—Nicky, where are you going?”

“To find Keppler. Maybe tell him a fake story to see if he’ll tell the truth. Call it ‘reverse interrogating,’” Nick holds up a hand and starts to saunter towards Grissom’s corner of the lab, his shoulders hunched. A bull ready to charge.

“Don’t be such a smart-ass, this is serious—Nick!” 

“Y’ain’t the boss of me, Cath. You lost that title a long time ago.”

Nick keeps walking,  _ fuming,  _ his nostrils flaring, Grissom can smell the restrained testosterone emanating through the halls. 

“I’m still your superior! Nick!” Catherine again calls to him, but it’s Grissom’s voice he obeys.

“Nick? My office. Cath, go see where Warrick's at and bring him back here. We’re going to talk about this as a  _ team.”  _

Grissom guides Nick in with a hovering hand on his back, shuts the door behind them. Nick immediately starts to pace, forcefully breathing. 

“Does she think I’m just automatically assuming he’s the bad guy in all of this? I may not like the guy but I ain’t gonna throw him under the bus, there’s just some questionable evidence and it’s our job to be objective about it, even if it was my own damn father I wouldn’t be jumpin to—”

Grissom grabs Nick by the back of his shoulder, twists him around and embraces him. It’s awkward and clumsy at first, Grissom hasn’t quite hugged anybody in a...casual manner since he hugged his mother goodbye when he moved out on his own, and at first Nick seems to be so taken aback that he’s almost frozen.

“What-what the hell is this?” he stammers in his thickening accent.

“I was too harsh when I left, Nicky. I’m sorry.” 

“Nah, you weren’t,” Grissom can feel the crinkling smile spread across Nick’s face as he settles into the hold and throws his arms around Grissom, too. “Was a bit...weird of me to just...go in for a hug.”

“It wasn’t. It was very  _ you,”  _ Grissom tightens his arms around him, before patting him on the back, the usual signal for the end of a hug.

Nick doesn’t let go.

He never does.

“You can let go now,” Grissom tells him, as his upper arm starts to pulse with phantom fingers gripping.

“Yes, sir,” Nick immediately snaps himself out of this rare intimate moment and clears his throat before taking his usual spot in front of Grissom’s desk.

“You, uh, already know about the Redrum incident, don’tcha?” Nick asks quietly, fidgeting with his fingers as Grissom leans back in his chair. 

“The ‘Redrum incident?’” Grissom piques an eyebrow.

“Greg named it that on account of it bein’ a...reverse murder. And a good movie,” he adds in a shrug. 

There’s that word again, “reverse.” If Grissom didn’t know any better, he’d think they were reversing to other confrontations they’ve had where Nick had the demeanor of a kicked puppy.

Nick must feel the same, he sits up and leans back in his own chair, one arm slung over and displaying the same facade of tough apathy that he attempted when he shaved his head, but as always, his shining eyes betray him.

“I just...I don’t get it. I don’t get how it could help, I don’t get how it makes the department look good, I don’t get how  _ they  _ thought it could work without  _ us,” _ Nick shakes his head.

He’s known Grissom long enough to know that when he’s silent, he’s allowing more time to digest what Nick is saying, and to let Nick continue.

“And I don’t get how Catherine could just...put more trust in this stranger than in people she’s worked with for damn near a decade, for people who have helped her, just as she saved—helped us! Sure, even though it all worked out in the end, it...it didn’t feel like a  _ team  _ effort.”

“We still are a team, Nick.”

“I thought...we were more than a team, Gris,” Nick’s voice is full of gravel. “Thought we were more like a, a family, ya know?”

“Hey, bro,” almost on cue, Warrick and Catherine enter. Nick gets up from his seat and spins around, walking backwards and taking position as Grissom’s right hand, folding his arms to shelter his racing heart from the suffocating tension between him and Catherine.

They recap the case, and his anger almost boils over again when Nick points out that Keppler knows where all the eyewitnesses live, his eyes flicking to Warrick for back up when Catherine gets defensive.

Grissom diffuses the word-bomb with a subject change, and dismisses Catherine. He waits until she’s out of eyesight and earshot before he asks what other evidence Keppler handled. Before Wendy walks in the room and is possibly the only true advocate for Keppler besides Catherine, saying that she hopes he’s clean. 

Grissom’s worked in the industry long enough to know that he’s probably not.

“We have to treat him like a suspect,” he sighs. Warrick nods solemnly and he knows Nick’s already on board. “I’ll tell Ecklie.”

“I’ll go follow up with Archie, see what Sanders is up to,” Warrick gets up. “You in, Nick?” 

“Yeah, right behind ya,” Nick sighs.

“Nick, a word?” Grissom holds him back.

“Yeah?”

“‘It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.’”

“Get that out of a fortune cookie?” Nick scoffs with a sarcastic laugh.

“I know the wound is still fresh, and that the hurt’s not going to just...go away. It’s not going to be  _ ‘over,’ _ ” Grissom emphasizes, another reversal to a strained conversation he still wishes had gone differently, “But you need to forgive her.”

“And Keppler?”

“Well, he’s not quite part of this...family, is he?”

“No, but we still gotta do right by him and give him that benefit of the doubt, don’t we? I mean, he is still one of us…”

Grissom piques an eyebrow, peels off his glasses.

“And...we gotta follow what the evidence says,” Nick sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

He stares at the preserved jar holding a deceased fetal pig. A ritual unbeknownst to Grissom that he’s been following since he left, longing for his guidance even without words to direct him.

“I don’t want her to get hurt by this,” Nick admits thickly.

His gaze turns to Grissom, who gives him a curt nod to dismiss him, and Nick smiles, a true Stokes smile, crinkles and all.

“Good to have you back, boss.”

“Good to be back, Nicky.”


End file.
